We recently connected with Susan Seay and have shared our conversation below.

Susan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

I was the annoying as a child. My favorite question was “Why?” A question I asked often. My parents are not saints who are blessed with endless patience, but they definitely tried their best to endure my seemingly endless need to know why. “Why is the sky blue?” “Why do you put on your left shoe first and not your right show?” “Why are we having spaghetti for dinner and not steak like they just showed on the commercial?” Why? Why? Why?

Raising a child who is deeply curious about almost everything, is not easy. I’m so grateful that in spite of my irritating barrage of questions my parents answered as them as best they could and then resorted to the parent classics like “I don’t know” or “Because I said so”.

Allowing me to be a questioner is directly connected to my best work as a Life coach and Family Strategist. Curiosity is at the heart of my best client breakthroughs. The more I remain curious, the better questions I ask, the better insights they gain about their own lives. As a life coach, I am clear that I don’t have the answers, my clients do. My job is to help them efficiently and effectively sift through their complex lives to find the clarity they desperately seek for their family.

It would’ve been easy for my parents to shut me but they didn’t. Of course there were times when they were tired and lacked the patience to deal with my need to know. But my overall memory was of them finding ways to answer my questions, which encouraged me to stay curious even as an adult. Curiosity is a core skill in coaching and a skill I have mastered over my lifetime. Thanks mom and dad.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Susan Seay is the host of the highly successful podcast, Mentor for Moms, which is rated in 2022 in the top 1.5% of all podcasts. As you listen, you get a sense of Susan’s heart to provide practical tools and loads of encouragement to busy moms that struggle with burnout and boundaries.

Her uncommon wisdom, coaching, and speaking allow exhausted high-achieving moms to be more intentional without any of the soul-sucking perfectionism in tow. Her aim is to help moms be better, not just do better. As a wife and mom to 7, she deeply understands the everyday challenges moms face. Susan is a mentor to thousands of women across the globe.

As a Certified Life Coach specializing as a family strategist, she enjoys engaging with her podcast audience events and retreats, as well as private mentoring moms in small groups or 1-on-1.

Download her FREE gift – a self-evaluation guide “12 Things Intentional Moms Do Differently” – Visit her website – SusanSeay.com

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I have a confession to make. I’m a mom and I rarely read ‘mom books’. That may not seem radical to my fellow entrepreneurs, but it’s a shocking truth in most moms conversations. When I share this with fellow moms though, their faces reflect more than a little disbelief. It can create an awkward moment for me, but I choose to lean into the awkward moment as I explain my favorite genre of books to help me be a better mom.

Instead of the typical family and parenting books, when I browse books online given or am given the chance to wander through a bookstore, I inevitably end up in the business management books section every.single.time. Title after title speaks to not only my business needs, but my family needs as well. It’s a bountiful buffet of wisdom, practical advice, and future needs planning at my fingertips.

While attending a conference years ago, I had a light bulb moment. My kids were little, but they were growing fast. I was in need of practical parenting advice. me As the presenter passionately shared from stage important things to know as your build your business, he emphasized building a team work mentality. He also pointed out how much better a team works when there are clear core values in place, effective conflict management procedures, among many other ideas.

As he spoke, a lightbulb went off over my head. This is not only what my business needs, this is what I need for my family. The same tools that help business build and manage a team, also work in the home. And I didn’t want to just have a successful business, I wanted a successful family and home life.

My conference notebook not only contained key next steps for me to implement in my business once I returned home, I now had clear, actionable steps to help our family move in the right direction as well. Ever since that moment, I continually find my best parenting advisors within the pages of business books. Now I take some of those same strategies and help moms to develop family strategies that work in their homes as well.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In 2020 not only was I dealing with the tsunami of changes from Covid-19, I also faced the hardest of challenge as fought for my life in a hospital bed during the height of a global pandemic. My illness was not Covid in any way, but it did effect my lungs. That meant I was at severe risk of contracting Covid or any number of other viruses. One day I was podcasting and coaching clients, and the next I was alone in the hospital. After the hospital staff got my pain under control and my lungs stable, I was sent home. But I was no longer the same person who left home a few days ago, I returned with significantly reduced lung capacity and the inability to speak. All I could think about during recovery was “I’m a professional speaker and coach and I can barely breathe and I have no voice, how does that work?”

Before this life-changing experience, I could take almost any situation and find the upside of it. I tend to be a glass half-full person, it’s my preferred way of viewing the world. During my recovery I struggled to find any upside to my own situation. To go from an independent, active and engaged person to a voiceless person who depends on others for every basic need was beyond humbling, it was depressing.

My daily routine consisted of breathing exercises to rebuild my lung strength. Resting a LOT to allow my body to heal. And coming to terms with the fact that no one knows how long this situation will last. My healing journey gave me the gift of stillness like I’ve never experienced before. My body was still due to weakness, but I had to learn how to learn how to still my mind. My thoughts wanted to camp out on all my losses. That only led me to feel worse and worse. If I wanted to not only heal but fully recover, I knew I had to shift.

My greatest transformation happened when I allowed myself to grieve how much my life had changed and also imagined that in spite of what I see today, life can get better. The good news is, each day I got stronger and stronger. After several weeks my lungs were fully functioning and my voice had returned. Initially I could only whisper and speak in short sentences, but over time things got better and closer to normal.

Now, when I coach a mom dealing with a life-changing illness or diagnosis I make space for her to grieve as I make space for to envision what life strategies best serve her family right now. My greatest challenge has deepened the compassion I bring into my work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://susanseay.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susanlseay/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SusanLSeay

Image Credits
Dwayne Hills – https://dhillsphotography.com/